


A Life In Three

by Desdimonda



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: Angst, Blood, Death, Desdimonda's origin story, F/F, Gen, Loss, Original Character(s), Pain, Silvermoon City, The Fall of Quel'thalas, The Scourge, high elf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-05-26 22:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15010490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdimonda/pseuds/Desdimonda
Summary: This is a piece I wrote for the Artists of Azeroth zine - 'What a Long Strange Trip It's Been'We got to write a small 'about artist/author' blurb, and well, here is what I wrote about the piece in mine. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.When I first heard that we were going to face off against Arthas and to be able to play Death Knights, it was a dream come true. For my most favourite lore was Arthas's rise - or fall - and the harrowing beauty of Frostmourne.My piece is in echo of a three part musical composition and details three poignant moments in Desdimonda's life. It starts from when she was alive in Quel'thalas, on the day it fell.I chose this because WotLK is the expansion that holds some of the dearest memories, sentiment, love, music, and overall feel of Warcraft to me. It also in a way echoes moments in my life; bad, the very bad, and then...some hope.Thank you WoW for always being there in some way to help be part of that hope.





	A Life In Three

 

_I used to love the sunset. It was the red of your hair. The fire of your soul. The beauty in your heart. But when it set that day, I loved it no more._

_Because you were no more._

* * *

_“Your parents?” said Issari, her small hands touching either side of Desdimonda’s face, tangled with tears and her ebony hair._

_Desdimonda shook her head and touched the ring on Issari’s finger. “My mothers are dead. They - they were taking some of the children. Getting them out of the city to the forest.” She looked away, staring at the bloodied blade of her sword._

_“Stop blaming yourself. You always do,” said Issari, giving her a quick kiss._

_Desdimonda pulled away, wiping away her tears with a hand, the plated glove almost shattered, exposing her bloodied fingers. “I was supposed to protect! But I didn’t. I can’t lose you too. Let’s leave. Leave! The city is lost - gone - we-”_

_Issari placed a single finger on Desdimonda’s lips, her hopeful eyes gazing up, accompanied with the gentlest of smiles, as if it were the morn, as if they had just shared an embrace, as if the world were not dying breath by breath around them._

_“Look behind me. They live. I live. And they need me. You know I joined the priesthood for this reason. I cannot walk away now in their hour of need.”_

_Desdimonda glanced behind the bush of curls around Issari’s shoulders, tangled, matted with blood and sweat, and saw the makeshift infirmary that they had made for the survivors. They needed her._

_“But I need you, too.”_

_Issari kissed her. “And you will have me. Come back to me with any survivors. Help them; help anyone."_

[](https://i.imgur.com/5BM3eWP.jpg)

* * *

 

_But the infirmary was nothing but blackened death when Desdimonda returned. Husks of bodies lay on the ground, indistinguishable. They had been given no mercy. Remorse didn’t exist with these creatures, did it? Footsteps trailed through the tainted earth, this way, that way. Desdimonda desperately searched for any sign of Issari. Red curls. Scraps of her clothing. Her ring._

_There was no sign._

_There was nothing left._

_I decided to make Him pay by turning what He’d given us against Him. I thought I was so clever in my grief. I thought I could see so clearly through my pain. The power He wielded through His Knights - that could be His downfall. I could use my honour, my mercy and resolve with that power._

_I had never been so wrong._

* * *

 

He was at the Courtyard. She could feel the power curl through the air like a song just for her, and so she followed. She knew what she was going to do. To make Him pay. What else was there left?

The streets that used to echo with laughter now screamed. Where they once gleamed with the splendour of the High Elves, they now ran red with their fall; they dulled black with the creeping death that spread its claws through the shreds of whatever life remained in the weeping kingdom of Quel’thalas.

Desdimonda walked this city as a Royal Guard, sworn on knee to protect Anasterian until her last breath. But now if the whispers were right, if all that she had heard was true, she was a guard no more. A guard of nothing. She had been broken; failed; fallen.

Like their home.

Like her life.

Taking a step to the courtyard, she expected to stand upon smoothly tiled stone, but it was cracked, painted with a swathe of blood, of ice, of something crunching beneath her feet that wasn’t stone or wood.

Desdimonda wondered if the bones she stood upon were a friend or foe. What did it matter? She had no friends left. No family. Nothing. The stench of death...or _undeath_ was so pungent, quashing the salt of the sea that whipped by with the afternoon breeze.

She heard a whimper and paused, turning to see a red haired High Elf curled on the patio, the last of her life slip, slip, slipping away.

“ _Issari?_ ” whispered Desdimonda, desperately, as she dropped to her knees, plate scraping against stone.

“Who?” said the girl, as the blue in her eyes wilted, waned, and her last breath fell.

Desdimonda touched a red curl that crowned the dead girl’s brow.

Hooves clicked on the courtyard stone and Desdimonda felt His power surge around her as if it existed of itself. It felt... _cold_. It took her breath as it crept across the hand that still held the dead girl’s red curl. The hair froze within her fingertips, and Desdimonda watched as it shattered and crumbled away to shards of dust.

“I have watched you,” He said, the click of His steed’s hooves echoing across the courtyard as He approached. “You have killed more of my army than most. Impressive.”

Desdimonda stood as she watched the remainder of the girl’s hair shatter and fall to the ground. She smirked and turned to face Him. “What, are you going to knight me for my deeds?”

Arthas slid off His horse, His armour hissing gently. Every movement was with purpose and grace. He smiled. “Is that a request?”

He took a step, and then another, before He unsheathed His sword and let the the blade catch the last rays of the evening sun as they glanced over the runes that shimmered. A haze of white, blue and ice billowed around the blade as if it breathed _._ As if it _lived._ Despite who held it, despite what Desdimonda knew it had done, she could not deny its beauty as much as she could not dismiss its power. Part of her wanted to touch it, regardless of what she thought might happen if she did.

And yet, part of her _didn’t care_.

“What do they call you?” He asked, walking forward, dragging the tip of Frostmourne along the courtyard. As the metal clawed against stone it _wailed_ as if a voice yearned to be free.

“Desdimonda,” she said, keeping her voice level as she held His eyes. “Arthas, right?”

“For now,” He said, pausing a foot before her. Tilting His head to the side, He rested the tip of Frostmourne inches from her toe, it’s overwhelming power radiating around her, through her, the threads slipping across her skin and her hair like the brush of a lover’s caress. Desdimonda breathed sharply, feeling light headed. But she stood firm.

Her mind had already been made the moment she’d seen the infirmary; the moment she’d lost _everything._

“I don’t often do this, Desdimonda, but I will give you a choice-”

She fell to her knees and bowed her head.

“The city is yours. Anasterian is dead. All our leaders and those I love are dead. We have fallen. You have _won_.” She paused, reached up and unclipped the armoured gorget that symbolised her ranking. Desdimonda dropped it to the ground and looked up, the metal to stone ringing in her ears. “Make me one of them. Knight me,” she said with a morbid smile. “What else do I have left?”

Arthas reached out a hand, His frozen plated fingers curling under her chin and dragging against her warm skin.

“Nothing, but _death._ ”

* * *

 

_The last thing I saw was the sunset behind His head. The last reminder of my life as I took my last breath._

_I used to love the sunset. Not anymore._

_We were called Death Knights. And we were His. All of us were His. He had threads of control over every single being of undeath bar the powerful that ruled alongside Him._

_And I didn’t know that when I bent the knee that day. I didn’t know my mind would become His. I also didn’t know that I would become a great Death Knight. That I would rise to lead and command. I was great; I was terrible; I was beautiful._

_Can you even fathom what it is like to obey a thought that is not your own? And then, enjoy what you do, void of all remorse? You look at me in disgust, in terror, for what I am now. But you know nothing of what I used to be._

_I had become, **death.** _

* * *

 

“You always take your time, Lady Icebinder, don’t you?” said Orbaz as he pulled his sword from a Paladin’s chest. “We’re done. He wants us back.”

Desdimonda stalked around the whimpering Paladin, her armour shattered and her wounded chest exposed. Desdimonda glanced to Orbaz, narrowing her cold, blue eyes. “Call me that again and I’ll have you on the ground like her,” she said, pressing the tip of her blade against the girl’s chest.

Orbaz snorted as he sheathed his axe. “Is that a promise, my Lady?”

Extending a hand, Desdimonda sent out a swathe of piercing shards of ice that erupted from the ground and surrounded Orbaz. He snorted, and cut the tips off with his axe.

“Cute.”

“Get lost, I’m having my fun,” said Desdimonda, suddenly smiling as she realised a patch of icicles had pierced the girl’s arm in a pretty little pattern. Desdimonda didn’t like to rush. In life she had - she’d never really taken the time to enjoy little things. Her life as a Royal Guard had been regimented and organised. And Desdimonda never knew how much she enjoyed pulling the life from her victim, breath by breath.

Food was unnecessary. Sleep was meaningless. This was her pleasure now. And it was an art.

“You know He likes quantity over quality,” said Orbaz as he called his Death Charger.

“Well He can remind me-”

_And I shall, Desdimonda._

The tip of her blade faltered against the Paladin’s chest as the words wound around her mind, pressing as sharp as the icicles she had summoned. She didn’t breathe anymore, but Desdimonda gasped, remembering what it was like to be breathless, to be blinded, to be reminded that she was His.

Slowly, she blinked, staring down at the Paladin who whimpered, her wet eyes begging for mercy.

“Why? Why do you...?” she said, her dying words staggered.

Desdimonda felt Arthas relinquish His control and a part of her was surprised, but most of her was not.

“Because I _want_ to _._ ”

With a stab of her runeblade, the Paladin was dead, and Desdimonda felt alive.

* * *

 

_People ask me, “Didn’t you fight His control?”. You fight His control, and you become exactly what it is you fight. He consumes you and makes you into nothing but an instrument of death. I didn’t fight it, so I became it. My own way._

_I don’t know which is worse._

_I had become death. But I also loved death._

_It filled my black heart, my soulless body. It was my blood, now. It was my life, now. It was me. And the more I became it, the more threads of control He unwound around my mind and let me be me._

_Until that day, when we were all free._

* * *

 

She walked along the edge of Light’s Hope chapel where the plaguelands become the holy ground of The Argent Dawn. It pained her as she walked, the threads of holy reaching out to assail her, answering the aura of her unholy magic. She held out a hand, staring at her pallid skin. She touched her breast, feeling no heartbeat. When she looked behind her at the people amaassing together, some who she was sure she was trying to kill just moments before, she couldn’t remember why. And worst of all, she couldn’t remember _who_.

“Desdimonda,” called a voice, familiar, but not.

She lifted her head. The voice was approaching with someone, someone whose heart did not beat. She touched the hilt of her blades, watching the runes whisper and glow beneath her hands. She touched her face, feeling a wet line of blood. Was it her blood?

“Lady Desdimonda,” called the voice again, more urgently.

Her name.

Her name was Desdimonda.

Through everything that surrounded her, through everything that swilled in her mind, she remembered _that_.

As the footsteps drew nearer, she turned to look upon a face. A face that was...familiar? It had to be. They had come here together, they had fought together. He knew her name. He knew her.

“Yes?” she said to the Death Knight, his human skin sallow, his hair and beard white. She tried, _tried_ to piece together what she could of him, but it was slipping away. She wanted to grab it, hold it, but the memory was like vapour, dissipating towards the sky.

“Are you alright?” asked Thassarian, reaching out a hand to place upon her shoulder.

That, she did not expect. Desdimonda parted her lips to speak, but she said nothing. He was asking, by choice. He had come, by choice.

His command was gone. His will was gone.

Desdimonda said nothing.

Thassarian smiled. “It is a lot to take in, our freedom.”

She turned and stared at what remained of the Paladins of Light’s Hope, Tirion standing at their head with Mograine. Those behind Tirion looked fearful, judgemental, like they would kill any one of them once Tirion had left. She did not blame them. Bodies were being removed, ready for their funerals. It had been all their fault. All her fault.

A Draenei priest stared at her, her eyes raw from tears. She clutched a bloodied shawl against her breast.

“Azeroth hates us. We have nowhere to go. What is left for us?” she said to herself, to Thassarian, to anyone.

Thassarian looked up at Acherus with a grim smile.

“ _Vengeance_.”

* * *

 

_I had lost the memory of who I was when I lived and when I died. A clean slate. But the foundation was cursed. There was no way back for me, only forward._

_My mind was my own again. All my own. And this was my chance….but for what? Thassarian spoke of vengeance against Him and many agreed. In barely a living breath, we were off to Northrend to begin our assault on Icecrown._

_But not for me. For me, all that was left was survival. For the memories returned piece by piece in Northrend, right back to that fateful day in Quel’thalas when I remembered that I had chosen to become this. I had believed - like so many of my brethren - that I’d had no choice, and had been raised in death._

_So many thought I needed to pay for my crimes in blood, in tears, by their hand or another’s. They thought it their duty to bring justice against me and my kind. But they don’t need to._

_The biggest change since the day I bent the knee to Arthas is that I have begun to feel remorse. For the past and the present._

_I pay for what I did everyday I still exist. I know what I was. I know the monster you see. I live as that monster._

_I am that **monster** _.

  



End file.
